Myron Wood

Lithographer's Bench

Unknown

Original etching signed by the Artist.

Original bronze sculpture by artist Curt Mattson. Edition 17/20.

Original painting signed by the Artist lower left.

Original oil painting on linen by artist Joseph McGurl. Framed.

Medium: original lithograph. Tito Varisco was a well known scenographer (set designer), and this print was inspired by the Bela Bartok opera "The Miraculous Mandarin", and was execut...

Image dimensions: 6.5 x 24.2 cm. Artist's Studio is a beautiful black and white etching on paper, realized at the middle of the XX century by the Italian artist Renzo Biasion (Treviso, 1914 - Florence, 1996). Hand-signed in pencil on the lower right margin. Numbered in pencil on lower left margin. From an edition of 100 prints. This original print is really interesting and represents an important place for the artist: his atelier at the same time in order and on the mess, with all the tools of the trade: it is a little step in the every day life of the artist. With a superb hatching and a full mastery of the technique, vibrant blacks and a balanced composition, this is a little dimension but precious contemporary artwork absolutely to collect jealously! In excellent conditions. Renzo Biasion (Treviso, 1914 - Florence, 1996) Born in Treviso in 1914, he moved to Venice where he graduated from the local art school and taught drawing in secondary schools. In 1940, when Italy entered World War II, he fought on the Greek-Albanian front as a second-lieutenant in the infantry and began writing a war diary...

Medium: original lithograph. This lithograph is from the rare 1957 "Improvisations" portfolio, published by the Artists Equity Association of New York on the occasion of the 1957 Spr...

Charles Quest, 'Work Bench', 1949, wood engraving, edition 40. Signed, dated and numbered 9/40 in pencil. Titled and annotated 'wood engraving 1949' in pencil, in the artist’s hand, lower right margin. A fine, richly-inked impression, on off-white wove Japan, with full margins (1 3/4 to 2 inches), in excellent condition. Matted to museum standards, unframed. ABOUT THE ARTIST Charles Quest, a successful artist, and fine art instructor, worked in a variety of mediums including mosaic, stained glass, mural painting, and sculpture, but remains best known as a printmaker. Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after his graduation in 1929, and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris, continuing to draw inspiration from the works of the Old Masters. After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis. Quest soon became interested in the woodcut medium which he apparently learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine ‘since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood’ at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were ‘more enjoyable than any other means of expression.’ In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting a lot of critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’ were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’ and the print ‘Still Life with Vise’, was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1951 he was invited by artist-Curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in the Graphic Arts Division of the Smithsonian's National Museum (now known as the American History Museum). This one-man exhibition was a remarkable achievement for Quest, who had been working in the medium for only about ten years. In the press release for the show, Kainen praised the ‘technical refinement’ of Quest's work: ‘He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.’ At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries in addition to one in his home town. He had also won 38 prizes, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Chicago Art Institute, the Metropolitan Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951. Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium’. Charles Quest retired from teaching in 1971 and made relatively few prints in his later years, as the rigors of the medium were too demanding. He moved to Tryon, North Carolina, with his wife Dorothy, an artist and portrait painter, and remained active as a painter until his death in 1993. An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted the interest of Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for the University's collection. In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division became the grateful recipient of a large body of Quest's work including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and stained glass, as well as his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including some 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity for further study and appreciation of this versatile and not-to-be-forgotten mid-Western American artist...